Roger Bartra

Roger Bartra Murià (born Mexico City, November 7, 1942) is a Mexican sociologist and anthropologist, recognized as one of the most important contemporary social scientists of his country.
Bartra, son of Spanish Civil War refugee writer Agustí Bartra and Anna Murià, is well known for his work on Mexican identity in The Cage of Melancholy. Identity and Metamorphosis in the Mexican Character, his social theory on The Imaginary Networks of Political Power and, recently, for his anthropo-clinical theory of the “exocerebro” (exo-brain), that argues that the brain is partly constructed by its “cultural prostheses”, external socio-cultural elements that complete it.
Trained as an anthropologist in Mexico, Bartra earned his doctorate in sociology at La Sorbonne and he is an Emeritus Researcher at Mexico´s National Autonomous University, where he has worked since 1971; in 1985 he was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship. He is also Honorary Research Fellow at the Birkbeck College of the University of London.

• 2014. Anthropology of the Brain. Consciousness, Culture and Free will, Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom.
• 2013. The Mexican Transition. Politics, Culture, and Democracy in the Twenty-First Century, Iberian and Latin American Studies series, University of Wales Press, Cardiff.
• 2012. The Imaginary Networks of Political Power. A new revised and expanded edition, La Jaula Abierta/Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico.
• 2008. Melancholy and Culture: Diseases of the Soul in Golden Age Spain, Iberian and Latin American Studies series, University of Wales Press, Cardiff.
• 2002. Blood, Ink, and Culture: Miseries and Splendors of the Post-Mexican Condition, Duke University Press, Durham.
• 1997. The Artificial Savage. Modern Myths of the Wild Man, Michigan University Press, Ann Arbor.
• 1994. Wild Men in the Looking Glass. The Mythic Origins of European Otherness, Michigan University Press, Ann Arbor.
• 1993. Agrarian Structure and Political Power in Mexico, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.
• 1992b. The Cage of Melancholy. Identity and Metamorphosis in the Mexican Character, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick.
• 1992a. The Imaginary Networks of Political Power, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick.